As the scale of integrated circuits increases, the effects of process and environment (such as, for example, voltage, temperature and crosstalk) tend to increase variation in delay throughout such circuits. Such variation increases clock jitter (or uncertainty in the clock arrival time at a flip-flop) in the circuits. Increases in jitter reduce maximum allowable delays in critical paths in the circuits for fixed clock cycles, which makes more aggressive optimization and greater turn-around time more important.